Turning next to Germany, we find that practically all of the books printed from 1450 to 1500 were reprints of old books. The literary pirate made his appearance almost as soon as the printer appeared. We have already seen that Fust himself was the first of the brood. The fact is not surprising, however, when we remember the conditions of the time. The idea of property in a book excepting as one particular object, a piece of furniture so to speak, never occurred to anybody. Throughout the entire period of manuscript books it was everywhere held that any man who had possession of a book, even temporarily, had a right to copy it. That the owner of the book had any right to control its duplication, even though he had been at great expense to make a copy, was not considered worth discussion. If a man could copy a manuscript which had cost a hundred crowns to make, might he not reprint a book which cost less than one tenth of that amount? It was held that ownership of a printed book carried with it the same rights of reproduction which had from time immemorial been attached to ownership of a written book. Men who wrote books wrote for the love of it. There was no such thing as authorship as a profession and no such thing as the sale of an author’s work, except so far as the books themselves were concerned. It is true that certain writers were helped and perhaps supported by wealthy patrons of literature in the old world or by rich men and politicians who were willing to pay for verses or pamphlets eulogizing their names and praising their exploits. Doubtless, there were writers who lived by their wits in this way, but their case was far different from that of the modern author who either sells his work to a publisher or makes a contract for a royalty. If a man was paid for writing a poem in praise of his patron neither he nor his patron was supposed to control the poem; in a word, there was no conception of any kind of literary property, and the printers soon found that there must be property in books or printing would become impossible.